Family's Jeep that did time in Asian conflict may be a new ride for Vermont veterans during parades

Dec. 20, 2012

Written by

Free Press Correspondent

The ruts still scar the lawn of the family home in New Haven, lingering evidence of Janelle Vincent’s attempt to master the driving skills necessary to maneuver her dad’s 1952 M38 Jeep.

“I want to learn to drive it so bad,” she said. “I find myself at times where nobody knows I was trying to drive it. It’s so funny; I’ve never driven stick shift before. I was going through my lawn and I thought I was going to flip the Jeep.”

Part of Vincent’s desire to master the Jeep is to honor the memory of her father, a former Marine sergeant who passed away in September.

“I told my dad when he was alive I was trying to learn and he said, ‘I’m proud of you, I’m proud of you.’ That’s all he could say.”

Vincent’s father, John LeGrange of Schroon Lake, N.Y., was a veteran of the Korean War. So is the Jeep, a remarkably well-preserved piece of military history. LeGrange purchased the Jeep in 1995 from an Army officer. “When (the officer) retired, the Jeep went through the motor pool and he somehow ended up with it,” said Janelle’s husband, Ron, who shook his head as he said he wished he knew more details of the Jeep’s transfer to civilian life.

“Her father told her this would always be her Jeep,” Ron Vincent said.

In June, LeGrange kept the promise, handing over the keys to Janelle.

“He knew with the older cars that we have, we would never sell it no matter how bad times got,” Janelle Vincent said.

The Jeep was among the last to house a 4-cylinder Willys engine. A year later, the military turned to AMC for its version of Jeeps, followed a few years later by a switch to Ford, Ronald Vincent said.

“This was the last year of the straight axle front end. After that, they started having trouble with the Jeeps flipping over because they were kind of top heavy because they were set up so high,” he said. “They went to an independent front-end suspension. That allowed them to lean more into the corners and they’d flip … with the narrow track and short wheel base.”

Jeeps were essentially a light four-wheel drive personnel carrier designed for rough terrain. Many were equipped with a mounted machine gun in the rear. The Vincents’ Jeep does not have the machine gun mount but it does have a rifle holster across the top of the dash.

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Ron Vincent pointed out that their Jeep is set up to run submerged. All wiring and electrical parts are waterproof. It has a snorkel attachment for the air breather and an exhaust extension, both of which reach above the window line. That allows the Jeep to cross many streams and rivers, although Vincent said he has never tested it out.

The Jeep does not have directional signals; time to use the old hand signals learned in driver’s ed, Ron Vincent said. Nor does it have traditional taillights. Instead, the Jeep sports blackout lights that provided a dim glimmer for trailing vehicles to follow during nighttime maneuvers, allowing the convoys to remain undetected by enemy aircraft.

The Jeep is not built for speed or comfort and it provides neither. “It’s nothing you want to go on the interstate with or a main highway because 40 miles per hour is pushing it,” Ron Vincent said. “These ride nice on a tar road, but there’s not a lot of give to them.

“They weren’t made to run on the road. They were made to run in the jungles and in the sands of the desert,” he said.

Occasionally, John LeGrange used the Jeep to haul logs off a mountainside he owned, but mostly the Jeep was “in a garage being polished,” Ron Vincent said.

When the Vincents, with daughters Amber, Paige and Harlie, visited LeGrange, the girls used to plead, “Pa, when can we go for a ride in the Jeep?” Janelle Vincent said. She said her father would load up the clan and head out for a short jaunt.

“It’s so full of memories,” Janelle Vincent said. “When we used to go there, especially at Christmas and it was really, really cold, my dad would put the top down and we’d go for a ride. He’d floor it but it would only go 40, 45.

“It was so much fun.”

LeGrange, who also owned a 1942 Jeep he had constructed from original parts by a distributor in Connecticut, always planned to show the Jeep at various events, but never did. Ironically, said Ron Vincent, the Jeep’s first show was the Snake Mountain Cruisers’ Better L8 Than Never show at Mount Abraham Union High School on Sept. 23, the day LeGrange passed away.

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“I was with him in Glens Falls (N.Y.) when he passed away,” Janelle Vincent said. “My mother went home, my sister went home and I just wanted to be part of the Jeep at the car show.”

She drove back to Bristol, where Ron was working as a volunteer. “I had my picture taken with it and I would have loved to have the Jeep win something in honor of him,” she said. “It means more to me. It’s like my dad is living here with me.”

The Vincents, who have restored their 1973 Plymouth Duster that brought all three daughters home from the hospital, plan to display the Jeep more frequently. Ron Vincent said one member of a military vehicle club declared the Jeep should be in a museum.

“Well, that doesn’t fit the bill at this point,” he said. “We’re probably driving it 50 miles a year, but it’s the fact that we can take it out and go down to the store with it or a place like that car show.”

Ron Vincent said the family has extensive paperwork on the Jeep that proves it was in Korea and is unrestored, tripling its value. “The paperwork’s worth more than the Jeep,” he joked.

The Vincents plan to exhibit the Jeep more often; at Bristol, Ron Vincent said, the Jeep prompted several Vietnam veterans to recall their experiences.

Ron Vincent is thinking of sharing the Jeep via local parades, such as the Memorial Day event in Vergennes or the Fourth of July parade in Bristol. He said he prefers to remain on the sidelines, saying, “I don’t like to be the center of attention but if they’ve got somebody who wants to drive who’s in the Legion, that’s fine.

“I notice how when they have parades, the older veterans … usually ride in convertibles because there aren’t many military jeeps around in drivable shape,” he said.